The Age of the Gentiles, No. 3

DS2B

The first civilization, which we call the pre-flood civilization or the antediluvian civilization, we found grew to magnificent proportions and elegance. However, in spite of its elegance outwardly, it was inwardly rotten to the very core. Out of that civilization developed a mixed breed of creatures that were half-human and half-demonic which were wiped out in the worldwide flood. Noah and his family alone were preserved through that flood along with the animals. After the flood, at the end of the second period of the gentile dispensation, phase three of the dispensation of the gentiles was inaugurated. In this phase, God readjusted his world household in some degree, but the stewardship--the control, the responsible parties--were still the gentile people.

So we're now at phase three of the dispensation of the gentiles. We come to, of course, a new civilization. This is the postdiluvian civilization--the one after the flood. All of the human beings in the world today are descended from the three sons of Noah--Shem, Ham, and Japheth which came off that ark. God told these people, in Genesis 9:1, that they were now to proceed to repopulate the earth. A new civilization was to be born. They had no hesitancy in leaving the ark. They had no hesitancy to develop this new civilization, for they had all come through a magnificent experience with the power and the reality of the living God.

We find that when Noah left the ark, his first thought was to worship God on the earth. This revealed that he was indeed properly oriented to the situation that ensued at the time. So Genesis 8:20 describes for us how he built an altar and sacrificed a lamb in thanksgiving to what they had just experienced. Remembering to thank God reveals that he had a true and genuine relationship to God. Today, you and I as Christians are in the position of praising God with the sacrifice of our lips--our words of praise that Hebrews 13:15 speaks of. We too, as we exercise this praise, reveal an orientation to the mind of God. God always honors the believer who puts Him first as Noah did in this act of thanksgiving. It is expressing thanks to God, and making that our priority, that enables us to maintain a spiritual frame of reference.

One of the first signs that we have lost our spiritual frame of reference is our lack of thanksgiving to God. That's when we begin to think we are independent. That's when we begin to think we go it alone. That's when God prospers us financially and we never thank him. That's when we discover we've gone half the winter in good health and we never say, "Thank you Lord." That's the time when we get that good exam, and we never say, "Thank you." There comes a time when we begin to be spiritually disoriented, and this will be one of the signals--you catch yourself failing to thank God for all of the things that have come to pass in your life that are a point of blessing. Noah was very very much impressed with the reality of God, and the first thing he did when he got off that ark was to build that altar and to express his thanksgiving.

God promised that He would never again destroy all of life on earth with a worldwide flood. His signature to that promise was the rainbow that we now see in the sky which had never been seen before that time. We have this taught in Genesis 9:8-17. One of the things that was to be different in postdiluvian civilization was that animals were now to be in fear of man, and some of them would be ferocious (Genesis 9). Up to this time, animals did not have a ferocity. The climate was to be changed. Instead of there being a uniform climate all over the world, there was now to be henceforth a cycling of seasons (Genesis 8:22).

There were certain dietary changes which were also brought in. Man would no longer be restricted just to fruits and vegetables as his diet. He was now permitted to eat meats fish and fowl (Genesis 9:3). This meant that man was now prepared to learn how to fish and to hunt for a food supply. One food was prohibited, and that was that he was not to eat blood. This was true also of the Jews. This was passed over into their code in Leviticus 17:11 and Leviticus 17:13-14. Also, Christians, during the age of the church, were advised that they should not eat blood (Acts 15:19-20, 29). Blood represents the life of the animal. This symbolically stood for the death of Christ upon the cross--His spiritual substitution for our spiritual death. Heathenism drinks blood, under satanic inspiration. Consequently, it is one of Satan's ways, again, of opposing God. Blood was out of bounds.

Nations

In this way was established a fourth divine institution. You remember that we've had three divine institutions thus far. Number one was the institution of volition. That is, that God has established that people everywhere should have the exercise of freewill. Then he had the institution of marriage, and then the institution of family. Now we have the institution of nations. These, as divine institutions, have as their purpose the preservation of the human race. Man left the Garden of Eden with an old sin nature which he was going to pass on to all of his descendants. Within that old sin nature was a killer instinct. There was inherent in the old sin nature the desire to destroy other human beings. As a matter of fact, there is innately in the human being the desire to destroy himself. Therefore, God had to come in now and, after the flood, put a restraint with these four institutions to protect the human race from destroying itself.

That's why it is a grievous sin to ever violate one of these for divine institutions. It is a sin on the volition end; on the marriage end; on the family end; and, on the national end. Satan, of course, as we have seen, struck it all three of these. He struck at volition in the Garden of Eden. He struck at marriage and family with the intermarriage of demon angelic beings with human women. Now we shall see how immediately he strikes at nationalism. In the institution of nationalism, Satan recognized another restraint upon his plans and his program.

In the establishment of this institution, and of God explaining now how the end of the gentile dispensation would be arranged, God gave man a right to do something that up to now man did not have the right to do. When Cain murdered his brother Abel, he was not brought to judgment and brought under execution. However, now in Genesis 9:5-6, we have declared to us a new authority placed in the hands of men. This was an authority which was necessary in order to establish civil powers and to establish law and order and national entities. Genesis 9:5 says, "And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it." If an animal killed a human being, God said that animal is to be taken and executed. He is to be destroyed. This regulation is still in effect today.

Capital Punishment

Then when we came to the next dispensation, that is, the dispensation of the church in which you and I live, this stipulation was again reiterated in Romans 13:4. There we are told that civil authorities have been authorized to use the sword, and that means to use the power of execution, in the performance of their duty of maintaining law and order in a civilized society. God will enforce the death penalty in the future also when we come to the dispensation of the kingdom. Isaiah 11:4 tells us about that. So this principle that premeditated murder is to be dealt with by the execution of the murderer has been in force since the last part of the dispensation of the gentiles. It will continue on through the millennium.

The reason for this is that God esteems human life very highly for the simple reason that it has been made in the image and the likeness of God. In Psalm 116:15, we read, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints because they have been made in the image and likeness of God." Exodus 20:13 is the rule in the Ten Commandments that "Thou shalt not commit murder." And that is what it says. It isn't "Thou shalt not kill." It is "Thou shalt not commit murder." It is not wrong to kill people under the authority of civil government for the specific breaking of laws for which the capital punishment has been subscribed. The thing that is wrong, that the Ten Commandments forbids, is the matter of murder--willful premeditated murder. Man's old sin nature is the problem. It has to be restrained in order that humanity does not destroy itself. This restraint that God established was in the form of capital punishment.

This is a deterrent before murder. If a person knows that if he takes another person's life, he's going to pay for it. As President Kennedy, on one occasion before he was assassinated, said, "It is very difficult to protect me as the president because if anybody wants to kill me, all he has to do is to be willing to give his own life in exchange." If a person knows that that's what's going to happen, God says it is a restraint. After he has committed the murder, having not been restrained by this regulation, then he is to be executed to preclude his ever performing another murder. Now that's divine viewpoint.

If that sets ill with you, it is because you're fishing around in your human viewpoint closet trying to come up with a justification because our society is so disoriented to the mind of God, in such an apostate condition, that we came to where our Supreme Court said that capital punishment is cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore had been outlawed in this nation. But God does not say that it is cruel and unusual punishment. God says that it is the order of the day. It is His provision to restrain Satan from destroying humanity.

So Noah was established as the first civil authority in society. This included this highest of all powers to take a human life in the form of punishment for having committed murder. Animals were killed when they killed a human. People were to be killed when they killed a human being. It was the right of civil authorities to try cases under laws to determine guilt and apply punishment. This, of course, went beyond just this case of murder. When God established that Noah could act as a magistrate in reference to premeditated murder, it also implied that he was a governmental authority for lesser violations of the rules and regulations of society. Consequently, lesser punishments could be applied. If you can do the worst thing to a person to take his life in execution, you can also apply lesser punishment like a $10 or $15 fine for a speeding ticket, all the way down the line. All of this was implied in what took place under this authorization after the flood.

So people today, as in the days of Noah, have to be held accountable for their acts if humanity is to avoid self-destruction. Execution deters murder. I'm well aware that there are many people who try to come up with pseudo statistics to prove that that is not so. But we also find in current articles that the statistics are starting to come through overwhelmingly in the other direction that where this restraint has been removed, homicide has risen precipitously. God's justice and the divine institution of nationalism require that murderers should be executed. Some people oppose capital punishment and oppose this regulation, but God is the one who has established it. Any time you debate with people, be sure you make it clear to them, "First of all, I want you to understand that God established this rule. He repeated it for the Jews. He repeated it for us in this age, and it will be repeated out in the next stage of the millennium. So let's get it straight. We're talking about something that God says we are to do." Capital punishment is not revenge tactics as the opponents like to present. This is a popular misrepresentation of the liberal mentality under Satan's influence.

However, capital punishment is not your private right. You don't have the right to form a vigilante committee and to take on you the execution of people that you think should be executed and who deserve that kind of punishment. This is only in the hands of the establishment under constituted laws. Human government will control the old sin nature within a nation by a police force. The highest punishment is capital punishment--taking the life. Human government will control the old sin nature outside of your nation with a military force. Again, a military force is simply another way of executing capital punishment. When a nation threatens your nation's sovereignty, then it is right for that civil authority to set in the field a military force, and it is right for those men in the military service to execute on the battlefield those who are the representatives of the government who is seeking to destroy your nation's sovereignty.

So internal and external controls of the old sin nature were established by this very important principle. Romans 13:5 states that there are two reasons for our subjection to the laws of society. One is for wrath's sake; that is, we are restrained by the fear of punishment--and man is. The second for us as Christians is for conscience sake. We are restrained because of the values and the standards that we have in our conscience.

So the principle of law for an orderly life and society is biblical. A lawless society is a degraded and a decadent society. If capital punishment is not enforced, crime increases. At a certain point, a nation can go so far and then God steps in and He executes capital punishment upon a segment of that nation through war or through the permitting of unrestrained violence. We as Christians in a free society therefore are to respect the law. Another word for the law or for government is "establishment." This has come to be a derogatory word on the lips of many disoriented young people today. We as Christians have a respect for the establishment and its laws because these laws are ordained of God. There are certain laws of establishment that come from the Word of God. They are the direct results of these divine institutions. In other words, these are the things that a nation is supposed to provide.

The Laws of Divine Establishment

1. Internal Security

   The first law of establishment is internal security for the citizens. A national entity through its legally constituted law enforcement agencies backed by the people is to provide protection for the life, for the property, and for the freedom of the citizens. This should be done by a system of courts through which speedy and accurate justice is dispensed. However, again the apostasy of our age is indicated by the fact that it has come to be the fashion to be sympathetic and tolerant of the criminal in spite of the fact that he imposes upon society great wounds and great suffering upon specific individuals. So point number one, one of the first laws of the establishment according to the Word of God, is internal security.

2. External Security

   The second law of establishment is external security. This means a military force. God's way of preserving freedom in the face of the threat of international controls is for our nation to be able to maintain its sovereignty. Soldiers who destroy his nation's enemy in battle do it as unto the Lord (Nehemiah 4:14). The structure of government that we have must include some way of protecting us from the outside. If we don't do this, history shows us what happens. Nations which have not done this fail their people, and in time their citizens become the victims of a military invasion with all the consequences that that means: to the women; to the children; to the men; and, to the nation's future itself. Establishment law number one is internal security--police. Establishment law number two is external security--a military force.

3. Government

   Establishment law number three is a structure of government. There has to be some system set up that establishes the lines of authority and also establishes how you can change that government. In this country, we call it the Constitution of the United States. There has to be a specific commonly known and commonly understood structure of government.

4. Economy

   A fourth law of the establishment is that the economy of a nation must be based on free enterprise. The reason for this is that unless you can own private property, you cannot have freedom. Therefore you violate the divine institution of volition. Capitalism and big business are therefore to be free to operate in order that they may produce the foundation of prosperity for the people. The reason you people have the highest standard of living on the face of the earth is because we have capitalism and big business operating under a free enterprise system. When the government steps in and exercise is controls, it always means lower standard of living and scarcity for the people.

   One of the laws which our Congress is now trying to change was the Elementary and Secondary Education Act brought into being under the president. The idea was to improve education in the United States. I forget how many millions of dollars have been spent on a certain elementary school program. The analysis of that program thus far has revealed that all the children who were under the government program on which millions of dollars were spent came out infinitely poorer in their education than those who were not in the program. This is characteristic of what government can do. When government moves in, it means a lower standard of living; it means lower performance; and, it means scarcity for the people.

   When a communist government moves in, with its complete control of the state, they have to go running around the world trying to find someone who will be dumb enough to sell them food so that their slaves will continue to operate within the worker's paradise that they have created for them. You can always find somebody like the United States, whom God has blessed because of its free enterprise system which is compatible with the divine institution of volition, and therefore because we have been prospered with food, that we are willing to help those who violate this institution. Remember that socialism and communism are opposed to private ownership of property, and that means you cannot be free. If you can't do with your money what you choose, you cannot be free.

   Our Secretary of State is in a bad state right now because we have a few senators who are opposing with a vengeance granting to a certain communist nation "most favored nation" status which gives great economic advantage to a nation that we declare in that position. One of the senators is saying that before we consider giving a communist nation most favored nation status with this economic advantage that this will give her, we should demand of that communist nation that she permit anybody who wants to leave that communist nation to leave. Anybody who wants to go to Israel or anyplace else, they should be allowed to leave. Until they agree to do that, they are taking our economic beneficence that we are giving them that has come from the free enterprise system, and we are letting them use it to enslave people. When a person can say, "I've had it; I'm getting out from under communism; and, I'm leaving this country," that is freedom. You know that no communist nation in the world would dare to do that.

5. Laws

   The fifth law of establishment is that there has to be a system of laws. This is part of the divine establishment. This system of laws must be objectively and fairly enforced. This begins with our Constitution and all the laws that flow from that. The legislation of our government is designed to protect our freedom, our life, and our property. Anytime legislation becomes anything else, it is out of line. But for a nation to function, it must have a system of making laws, changing laws, and enforcing laws.

6. A Common Culture

   Then there is a sixth law of establishment, and that is to have a common culture. This is part of the divine establishment--a culture which reflects the ideals and the principles of a nation. This includes our view of God and His sovereignty; the moral code on which the nation functions; the public means of entertainment and of information; the educational system; the patriotism; the attitude toward patriotism, which again is decried and belittled in this country; and, the element of religious freedom for one's personal communication with God.

As Christians, these are the things that we should understand that constitute divine establishment. It all came from that moment when God said to Noah, "From now on, you are a civil authority. You may take a person's life if he kills another human being. You establish rules and regulations, and you provide whatever society needs to preserve the four divine institutions, and then you enforce them." So teach your children to respect authority and the divine laws of establishment. These begin with the home; they move to the community; they move to the city; they move to the county; to the state; and, then to the nation. If you fall into the pattern of the popular pastime of knocking the establishment, just recognize that these are deranged mentalities filled with spiritual darkness. That's why they're kicking against God. When you strike these laws of establishment, you are striking against God.

Few rulers on the face of the earth can govern according to God's standards and God's principles. That's true. Nevertheless, the office of government is to be respected (Daniel 4:17, Romans 13:1, 1 Peter 2:14). We should pay our taxes (Romans 13:6, Matthew 22:21) because this makes the divine laws of establishment possible and enables them to function. When it comes to the nation's external danger, we should be willing to serve in the military (Psalm 144:1). Above all, 1 Timothy 2:1-3 tell us that we should pray for all levels of government and all levels of authority in order that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, and that there may be a free expression of the Word of God. 1 Peter 2:13-14 states that we are to obey the laws.

So how came we then to have these nations? You remember that up to now in the period of the gentiles, everybody was the same race; everybody was the same color; and, everybody talked the same language. Well, we have the story in Genesis 11 where we find that a city had been founded by the name of Babel. For a while, after the flood, the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth obeyed God in His command to replenish the earth. They moved out to repopulate the flood-ravaged earth. They moved from the mountain range of Ararat in Armenia where the Ark had settled, and they moved toward the fertile valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (Genesis 11:2).

At that point, when they reached that Shinar plain, they stopped moving. It had taken a few generations for them to get this far. When they came to that very fertile and luxurious place, they decided to go no further. They all spoke the same language. Therefore it was very easy to bring about a united action. It was easily achieved because they had a common language. A common language binds a group of people together. This was the condition at the time.

Nimrod

In Genesis 10:9, we read that Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord. This does not mean that he was leading safaris out into the bush. What it means is that he was an unremitting pursuer of humans. He was a dictator in this city of Babel that he had established, and he carried on a reign of terror against his enemies. He was one of a long line of rulers who have abused the civil authority that God gave to his great-grandfather Noah. What all of this connotes is that Nimrod, of the Hamitic line, was opposed to God and openly defied Him. This is the city and the community which later became known as Babylon.

You remember that Babylon in Scripture symbolizes every false evil religious system known to man (Genesis 10:8-9, Micah 5:6). The religious system that originated in Babylon, as a matter of fact, under the inspiration of Satan, was about the 4th century A.D. fused with Christianity. After the Roman Empire accepted Christianity as the state religion, the Babylonian religious system was fused with Christianity and developed into what is known today as the Roman Catholic Church. Many features which are so alien to Scripture that you find in Roman Catholicism are directly from the plain of Shiner. This system is yet going to evolve into the world church of the antichrist during the tribulation period. The groundwork for that is being prepared today by the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. Both of these organizations are specifically sympathetic with the concepts upon which Nimrod established this city.

So the false church that Nimrod, in effect, began which will find its fruition in the tribulation is the one that Jesus Christ destroys when he returns (Romans 1:8, Revelation 17. So it's not surprising that this culture, so disoriented from divine viewpoint, should listen to Satan bringing to them a scheme for world control. Here's a city. It's a magnificent culture, and Satan inspires a thought of internationalism. Genesis 11:3-4: These people, under the leadership of men like Nimrod, "Said one to another, 'Come let us make brick and burn them thoroughly,' and they had brick for stone and slime they had for mortar. And they said, 'Come, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.'"

The Tower of Babel

It's amazing that in three or four generations from the flood, man is up to his old tricks again. He has gone negative to the doctrine that he has been taught, and he has again brought a vacuum into his mentality. He has again sucked in the doctrines of Satan. Consequently, callouses have built up upon his soul; a darkness and insensitivity has settled upon him; and, the result is that his old sin nature has taken control. It has enabled the emotions to dominate his mentality, and the mind has gone spiritually insane. 2 Thessalonians 2:11 calls this "strong delusion"--spiritual insanity. What happened here on the plane of Shiner that led to the building of the Tower of Babel is summed up by Paul in Romans 1:21: "Because when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened."

So Genesis 11:5 tells us the judgment that God exercised upon these people: "The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men built." The "children of men" means unbelievers. Verse six says, "And the Lord said, Behold, the people are one, and they have all one language." That's why they were one--because they had one language. "And this they begin to do." This was just the beginning of their resistance and opposition to God and to the divine institutions. "And now nothing will be withheld from them which they have imagined to do." And what are they imagining to do? They are imagining opposition to God--resistance to God. They are imagining evil. They are on exactly the same course as their forefathers had been on the other side of the flood.

What God is saying here is, "If we allow this world government to be formed, all of humanity will be united under the domination of a central committee. And this central committee will be under the influence of Satan. And then there will be no restraint upon evil in all of the world. Furthermore, because there will be no restraint upon evil, there will be no access to the enlightenment of the Word of God. When a world power takes over a nation in a dictatorial way, and violates these principles of establishment, the first thing that goes out the door is the Word of God. This is amply demonstrated in the world today everywhere where communism has taken over a nation. Because it is a dictatorial domination violating the divine institutions, the Word of God is closed to the people of that nation. This is what was behind the thinking of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

So the Trinity decided to create a linguistic barrier to force the people to divide up into national entities. We have this described for us in Genesis 11:7-8 where God says we will go down and we will mix up the languages. Acts 17:26 tells us that God has set boundaries for people to live in nations. Well you can imagine the state of panic that ensued when suddenly, as they were building this structure, and as they had already begun to administer their one world government, that they started talking gibberish to each other. They had the biggest kind of Pentecostal meeting you ever saw. All over that ziggurat, from one platform to the other, people were speaking in tongues like you have never heard people speak in tongues before. Right away they knew that something had happened, and it caused quite a panic. There was a frantic listening and finally hearing, "Here's a guy who understands what I'm saying. I know him. Let me get over with you. You and I--let's go together." Pretty soon they found, here and there, people that talked their language, and they began to gravitate toward one another.

Well, the result was exactly what God has stated to His writers of Scripture--the psalmist in Psalm 33:10: that "God brings the council of men to naught." They thought they had it made. If they could just establish this kind of a world power, God would not be able to separate them. So the result was, when they couldn't understand each other, that the descendants of Noah drifted away from the plain of Shiner into the national boundaries which were created for them by God. Genesis 10:32 says, "These are the families of the sons of Noah after the generations in their nations, and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood." Those with the same language naturally drifted off together.

It seems apparent that God also performed something else. When He divided languages, He also took into account the genetic structure of the people who spoke one particular language. The result of that was that, from these language divisions, people with a certain type of genetic structure evolved the races. After a few generations, the color began to change, and facial features began to change. Something within the genetic structure which was dominant in a certain direction began to be externally evident and the races of mankind developed. From Shem came the Semitic people, primarily the Jews and the Arabs. From Ham came the Egyptians; the Indians; and, the African and Asian nations. From Japheth came the Indo-European, or as we commonly call them, the Western nations.

These are separations which are still in existence today. They are a testimony to the divine plan of national entities. These national divisions have prevented Satan from dominating the world and from cutting off access to the Word of God. It has prevented him from encroaching upon any nation which respects the divine laws of establishment. So Satan's attack on the divine institution of nationalism was a monumental failure, just as his attack on the other institutions.

Well, this is the end of the dispensation of the Gentiles. They moved away, and they separated themselves into their national groups. The dispensation came to an end. Briefly, once more, what constituted the characteristics of this age? It included one language and one race, as well as four divine institutions: volition; marriage; family; and, nationalism. It went from Adam to the Tower of Babel--a period of 2,000 years. There was no written Scripture but there was verbal Scripture--revelations that God gave. Salvation was by faith in a coming savior on the basis of Genesis 3:15. There was no missionary agency. It was a family situation. Those who knew the Word were teaching within the family. The whole dispensation was divided into these three stages: innocence; conscience; and, human government.

Well there are some very significant lessons to learn from this first dispensation. Human history, when you view it from divine viewpoint, which is what a dispensation is, gives us some fantastic insights that develop discernment. We found that the tower of Babel is like the United Nations, as we know it today, whose symbol incidentally is a towering building with a dove of peace floating over a globe. I think that is rather significant. They go for a tower too. This is the symbol of supposed human unity and of peace. However, this is a man-made security, and the Bible tells us that's a delusion (Jeremiah 17:5). We are ready to place our trust for security in the Lord (Psalm 4:8, Psalm 33:18-21). Only the Lord Jesus Christ can provide security for us in the period of our time on earth.

A nation's safety, during this time when Satan dominates the world, is going to be right here in these laws of establishment that we have talked about and in the military force and the military power that we have. As we remain stronger than our enemies, we will maintain peace on this earth. That's the biblical way to maintain peace--to be so strong that your enemy dare not exercise his old sin nature against you; and if he does, to be able immediately to destroy him. A nation's security in this age depends upon having a military establishment which can cope with your enemies. All the efforts toward international unity and peace are going to fail. You cannot legislate love between people. You cannot deal with the old sin nature until Jesus Christ returns.

So there are now two families of men. One is God's, and one is Satan's (John 8:42, 44). One is a positive group. The other is a rebel. We trust that you belong to the positive family which is the family of God.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1971

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